Education Case studies

Castle View: ONELAN help "Build School for the Future" with Digital Signage and TV Streaming

Castle View Enterprise Academy was established in September 2009 as one of five schools in Sunderland as part of the 'Building Schools for the Future' project. The City of Sunderland Council (cosponsor) and Northumbrian Water, the Academy's lead sponsor, invested £17 million to build an Academy that specialises in Business, Enterprise and ICT.

Project objectives and scope.
Castle View had a wide range of requirements from their ONELAN digital signage system including:

A cost effective means of delivering information to visitors, students and staff

Provision of live TV across the IP network for both broadcast material and local events within the school

Recording to provide video on demand resources for learning

A video on demand library

The ability for teachers to create online learning resources

With the Academy vision of being a regional leader in ICT, digital signage forms a critical part of this. Its flexibility, ease of use and dazzling displays are a new and innovative technology for this school and many of its staff and students. There was no technology quite like it in the original school prior to the rebuild.

Digital Signage Content Strategy
Castle View wanted to use the digital signage to display a range of information including adverts for school clubs, results of House competitions, birthday messages, display of televisions channels during breaks and lunches, behavioural league tables and event details. The network comprises 11 ONELAN Net-Top-Boxes: 1 NTB 610 publisher and 10 NTB 510 subscribers. One of the key aspects of the project is the installation of two OmniServers. With the OmniServers, staff not only have an 'off air' recording solution but also the ability to link into the digital signage network. This provide the screens with live TV feeds for news and educational TV channels across the network infrastructure without the need to run additional RF cabling, thereby keeping additional costs to a minimum.

End User Feedback
Many schools and Academy's across the country will testify that it's logistically very difficult and slow to get messages across to a large number of people in a short space of time. Castle View is no exception and the adoption of ONELAN digital signage has dramatically changed this for the academy. Now, a wide range of information including messages, audio & TV programmes, updates and alerts can be easily disseminated to all of its students and teaching staff quickly without having to print endless posters and memo's and manually distribute.

"Staff and students are constantly knocking on my door asking if new things can be uploaded and many have commented on how much better it is to have a system that is eye-catching and gets their message across. In my role as Marketing and Content Administrator, the time saving aspects of this system are invaluable. I would strongly recommend this system to any business that wants to take itself forward in the way of signage and getting their message across."Gavin Willis, Marketing and Content Coordinator